Apprenticeship

From Learning to Leading

The Apprenticeship is the immersive professional training phase of GatherWell’s Psychedelic Guide Program. Over approximately 18 months, apprentices deepen their theoretical understanding, develop practical skills, and progressively assume responsibility for the care of participants in psychedelic group settings.

Growing from Foundations

Building on the foundations established through Groundwork, apprentices develop the knowledge, theory, ethical orientation, skills, and presence needed to responsibly inhabit the guide role, while studying GatherWell’s philosophy and Indigenous practice-informed approach and learning frameworks for applying these principles within the current cultural context.

Alongside a small cohort of peers and a network of mentors, apprentices are supported in exploring their unique callings, skills, and areas of interest, while developing greater awareness of their blind spots, edges, and areas for continued growth.

Apprentices move progressively through the roles of:

Observer

→

Assistant

→

Co-Lead

At every stage, responsibility increases alongside supervision, mentorship, and feedback.

Upon successful completion of the Apprenticeship, guides may be certified by GatherWell.

How Apprentices Learn

The Apprenticeship integrates four complementary modes of learning because we believe the capacities required for guiding develop through more than the acquisition of knowledge. Apprentices learn through study, relationship, embodied experience, practice, reflection, and feedback, with each informing the others.

Didactic

An online classroom combining synchronous and asynchronous learning, including theoretical instruction, case studies, readings, demonstrations, and role play.

Relational

A web of mentorship involving classroom facilitators, GatherWell teacher and Lead Guides, guest teachers, mentors, experts, and cohort peers.

Experiential

Direct practice in participant preparation, integration, group ceremony facilitation, and other client touchpoints, with supervision and debriefing.

Evaluative

Ongoing opportunities for self-reflection, peer reflection, feedback, and generative evaluation from program staff and mentors.

Apprenticeship Curriculum

The curriculum brings together the many dimensions of psychedelic guiding, weaving theory and practice, and building as knowledge and capacity deepen, all in service to an integrated learning experience. While the curriculum does not necessarily unfold in the order presented below, the following framework offers a clear way to understand the breadth and interconnectedness of the areas explored throughout the Apprenticeship.

Foundations & Context

GatherWell’s Philosophy of learning approach and philosophy of care approach
Ethics of guiding (Part 1)- Foundational frames and concepts – why ethics matter
History of psilocybin use globally
Indigenous traditions and uses.
Non-Indigenous history and contemporary use- Scientific history
Overview of current research and regulatory changes in the field

This area supports apprentices in:
Deepening their understanding of psychedelic care, including the historical, scientific, cultural, and contemporary contexts in which this work takes place, and engaging ethics as an ongoing practice of discernment, including questions of power, boundaries, cultural responsibility, scope of practice, accountability, safety, and responsibility to participants and community.

Relationship to Medicine, Indigenous Knowledge & Lineage

Introduction to Mycology
Indigenous-informed lens. Animism. Mazatec land, culture, and cosmology
Relationship to Indigenous knowledge- Appreciation, Respectful Appropriation and Misappropriation
Forming relationship with the medicine- Principles of the mushroom

This area supports apprentices in:
Developing a relationship with the mushrooms, land, lineage, and cultural histories surrounding psychedelic medicines, while exploring how to engage Indigenous knowledge with respect, humility, and discernment.

The Guide: Self, Relationship & Capacity

Guide/client relationship dynamics (Part 1 &2)
Developing the guide seat
Guide self-care, energetic hygiene, own support systems.
Trauma-informed care (Part 1 & 2)

This area supports apprentices in:
Inhabiting the guide seat, cultivating the presence, embodiment, self-awareness, and relational awareness needed to accompany others through vulnerable and transformative experiences.

Exploring the dynamics of guide–participant relationships, including boundaries, power, attachment, projection, transference, and the responsibilities inherent in holding a position of care.

Preparation & Integration

Ethics of guiding (Part 2)- Ethics of preparation and integration protocols
Neuroscience of psilocybin
Preparation (Part 1)- Intake process, Assessment of participant fit, GatherWells’ Enhanced Informed Consent Protocol
Medical & Psychiatric contraindications and considerations
Preparation (Part 2)- Development of preparation practices, Guiding intention setting process, Day-of session preparation logistics
Integration Protocol (Part 1)- Purpose, theory and practical steps of GatherWells’ Integration philosophy and protocol
Integration Protocol (Part 2)- Development of integration practices, integration for challenging experiences.

This area supports apprentices in:
Developing practical skills for participant preparation, including intake, screening, informed consent, intention-setting, safety considerations, and preparing participants for the psychedelic experience.

Learning to support integration as an essential part of psychedelic care, including working with challenging experiences and supporting participants in carrying their experiences into their lives.

Group Ceremony & Facilitation

Ethics of Guiding (Part 3)- ethics of guiding group ceremony and individual sessions
Group Work (Part 1)- Differing formats (low, medium and full doses), dosage ranges, purposes and applications
Group Work (Part 2)- Opening and closing the ceremonial space, music and sound accompaniment, ritual, spiritual and energetic elements
Group dynamics and management, Staff to participant ratios
Exploring common participant presentations and guide responses
Interventions- Why, when and how to intervene with demonstration and practice
Unusual or extreme participant responses and how to intervene for safety.
Emergency protocols.
Working with collective/transpersonal themes- Ancestral work, intergenerational trauma, collective and cultural shadow.

This area supports apprentices in:
Developing the knowledge, presence, and practical skills needed to facilitate group psychedelic ceremony, including opening and closing space, responding to participant needs and navigating group dynamics, and learning intervention techniques, how to approach them ethically, developing discernment about when and how to intervene.

Learning to attend simultaneously to individual experience, group dynamics, ceremonial space, and the larger relational and cultural context in which psychedelic work unfolds;

Developing greater capacity to recognize and work with activation, uncertainty, complexity, conflict, and unexpected or challenging experiences in oneself, others, and the group.

Individual Work & Other Applications

Individual psychedelic sessions- format overview, Indications for use, unique considerations, applications, and ethics.
Microdosing protocol and application

This area supports apprentices in:
Understanding individual psychedelic care formats and the distinctions, considerations, and ethical responsibilities involved in working outside of a group context.

Developing an Ethical and Sustainable Practice

Ethics of Guiding (Part 4)- Ethics of ongoing maintenance and accountability in one’s practice such as supervision, mentorship, etc.
Support in visioning and planning a practice including having the necessary policies and documentation in place.
Review of current regulations filed and legal pathways for graduates.

This area supports apprentices in:
Recognizing their own strengths, edges, limitations, and areas of growth, and seeking support, supervision, or intervention when needed and well as exploring their unique way of relating, cultivating their strengths, creativity, and areas of focus as a guide, while remaining grounded in shared ethical, relational, and safety frameworks.

Beginning to articulate an approach to practice that brings together their own personhood and way of being with the knowledge, skills, responsibilities, and ethical foundations of psychedelic guiding.

The Apprenticeship is not only a period of professional development, but an opportunity to enter into a community of practice with peers, mentors, and experienced guides. Over the course of the program, apprentices deepen relationships with one another while developing the knowledge, capacities, and practical experience needed for the work. The cohort becomes an important part of the learning itself, a space for mutual support, reflection, challenge, and the formation of an ongoing professional community.

Why Apprenticeship?

We use the word apprenticeship intentionally.

To us, apprenticeship means learning a practice through sustained relationship with the people, community, and conditions in which that practice is held.

It means learning from the inside out: experiencing the work, witnessing others who have developed their own practice, trying it ourselves, receiving feedback, and gradually taking on greater responsibility. Knowledge is woven together with direct experience, observation, practice, mentorship, and reflection.

Our graduates leave as guides. Not simply with knowledge about guiding, but with hands-on experience and a developing capacity to actually do the work: to recognize what is needed, respond with discernment, and hold the guide role with presence, skill, and responsibility.

Ethics as a Practice

Ethics woven throughout the training

At GatherWell, we understand ethical practice as more than a set of rules, protocols, or professional standards. Ethics is a way of perceiving, discerning, and responding to the complexity of relationship, power, responsibility, and care.

For this reason, ethics is not taught as a single subject within the Apprenticeship. It is woven throughout the program, from the foundational capacities developed in Groundwork through classroom learning, case studies, role play, mentorship, and experiential practice.

Ethics is developed through

Foundational capacities: Developing self-reflection, humility, curiosity, relational awareness, and the ability to recognize and work with power, activation, complexity, and difference.
Ethical frameworks and protocols: Studying the principles, responsibilities, and practical protocols that inform ethical psychedelic care, alongside active engagement with GatherWell’s Code of Conduct for Guides. Apprentices work to understand both the ethical reasoning behind these standards and the specific policies that guide practice.
Practice and application: Working with role plays, case studies, simulated scenarios, and real-world apprenticeship experiences to develop ethical discernment in context and, as much as possible, practice applying relevant policies and protocols before graduation.
Reflection and feedback: Using self-reflection, peer feedback, mentorship, and ongoing evaluation to identify areas of growth and strengthen ethical capacity.
Structures for ongoing accountability: Learning how supervision, mentorship, peer support, continued education, and clear processes for addressing ethical concerns sustain ethical practice beyond training.

Throughout the Apprenticeship, ethics is therefore connected to the actual decisions a guide faces: how we understand consent, boundaries, power, scope of practice, intervention, cultural responsibility, participant wellbeing, group dynamics, and our own limitations. The aim is for apprentices to graduate with both the capacity for ethical discernment and a clear understanding of the standards and responsibilities they are expected to uphold in practice.

Indigenous-Informed Practice

GatherWell’s approach to psychedelic guiding is informed by Indigenous ways of understanding relationship, reciprocity, interconnectedness, place, lineage, and the living world. We engage this influence with humility and care, recognizing the distinct histories and traditions from which these ways of knowing emerge and our responsibilities as non-Indigenous practitioners.

Learn more about our indigenous informed approach

Throughout the Apprenticeship, this relational lens invites participants to explore the relationships between people, place, community, culture, history, and the more-than-human world; to consider relationship with the mushroom as more than a substance or therapeutic tool; and to engage questions of lineage, reciprocity, responsibility, and cultural context.

Learning Directly from Indigenous Wisdom

A distinctive part of the Apprenticeship is the opportunity to learn directly from one of GatherWell’s Indigenous lineage holders, who comes from a long line of women holding sacred ceremony with the psilocybin mushroom in Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico. At this moment she asks not to be named explicitly in public facing communications. This may change in time. For now we honor her wishes. It is the relationships she has with GatherWell staff and team that has allowed the trust to share her wisdom with those we apprentice.

For GatherWell, it is a profound honor to have her share her wisdom and perspective with our apprentices. Couched within the Apprenticeship Program are a series of videos in which she shares exclusively with GatherWell apprentices, offering her wisdom and direct guidance on specific themes and topics that tie directly to the curriculum.

These teachings provide a perspective that is rarely available within contemporary Western psychedelic training. They are an invitation to stretch our ways of seeing and to encounter the work through a worldview shaped by living lineage, place, relationship, and generations of ceremonial practice.

The videos are offered with deep respect for the knowledge and lineage being shared, and as one part of a broader commitment to helping apprentices develop cultural humility, discernment, and responsibility in how they engage Indigenous knowledge.

Experiential Apprenticeship

Learning to hold responsibility through practice

Across residential retreats, apprentices experience the full arc of group psychedelic care while moving from participant to observer, assistant, and ultimately co-lead.

Participate: Two Groundwork Retreats

Before taking responsibility for others, apprentices participate as clients in two GatherWell retreats during the Groundwork Practice phase of the program. Each retreat includes a group ceremony with psilocybin-containing mushrooms, framed by preparation and integration.

These experiences provide an embodied understanding of the participant’s journey, the approach they will be learning, and deepen their relationship with the medicine.

Observe: One Observation Retreat

During the Apprenticeship phase, apprentices observe experienced GatherWell guides facilitating group ceremonies and how they attend to the many layers of the work: preparation, ceremonial presence, participant support, group dynamics, intervention, and integration.

At this stage apprentices do not interact with participants during the ceremonies, the intent is for them to observe without having to do anything.

Assist: Two Assistant Retreats

Apprentices begin practicing skills and presence they have learned theoretically and in role plays in a real life context by assisting in group ceremony led by GatherWell Lead Guides.

They participate in participant touchpoints and develop practical skills while receiving direct supervision, mentorship, and feedback.

Co-Lead: Two Co-Leading Retreats

Apprentices co-lead group ceremonies alongside a peer apprentice, with expert oversight and mentorship from a GatherWell Lead Guide who is supporting them during the ceremony and there in case they need to get involved for client wellbeing.

Responsibility for the group and individual participant experience increases while supervision remains close.

This progression allows apprentices to develop skill through practice rather than assuming responsibility before they are ready.

Evaluation within Apprenticeship

Evaluation is understood as part of the learning process. Its purpose is to help apprentices and mentors see the work clearly, identify areas for growth, and determine readiness to take on increasing levels of responsibility.

Learn more about the evaluation process at GatherWell

Once in Apprenticeship, evaluation increases and becomes increasingly focused on demonstrated knowledge, skill, judgment, and capacity in practice.

As apprentices move from observation to assistance to co-leading, they receive ongoing feedback and supervision and are assessed for readiness to take on increasing responsibility for participant wellbeing.

We attend to safety, ethical judgment, relational capacity, practical skill, self-awareness, ability to work with complexity, and the capacity to recognize when support or intervention is needed.

The aim is to help guides cultivate a demonstrated capacity to recognize their own edges, remain open to feedback and learning, and take up the responsibility of this work with integrity and care.

Ready to Apply?

Apply here